Standardizing Change Management Mechanisms in Large Organizations: A Review of Advances in Adoption and Sustainment

Abstract

Large organizations manage change as a portfolio rather than as an event, and increasingly do so through standardized machinery: program offices, governance gates, readiness surveys, training pipelines, and benefit reviews. The scholarly literature, however, remains organized around competing stage models, and the applied literature is dominated by conceptual frameworks whose comparative effectiveness has not been tested. This integrative review asks what can defensibly be standardized in enterprise change management and what must remain local. Drawing on organizational development research, implementation science, information systems, safety science, quality and regulatory management, and formal process standards, it synthesizes advances along two outcome families the field increasingly treats as distinct: adoption, the uptake and use of a new practice, technology, or structure; and sustainment, its continued delivery, with benefit, after dedicated implementation support ends. Adoption advances include the reconstruction of readiness as a measurable multilevel construct, the taxonomic specification of change strategies, the maturation of determinant frameworks supporting tailoring, and evidence treating leadership as a dosed behavior rather than a disposition. Sustainment advances include conceptual clarification separating sustainment from survival, the reframing of adaptation as a condition of sustainment, the arrival of assessment instruments and maturity models, and incentive-linked and monitoring-based mechanisms for sustaining change after closure. A six-layer architecture is proposed that standardizes governance, diagnostic instruments, strategy vocabulary, reporting, and competencies while devolving strategy selection and change content. Nine design propositions and nine research priorities follow, including comparative trials of change methods and long-horizon sustainment measurement.